I used to just go for the Elvis platter, because I would be *hungry*, but ever since their “gluten free” offerings sickened my wife (who has a lovely laundry list of autoimmune issues, including MS), we haven’t been back.

Contrast that with the break-in (but not theft of) my F350 in suburban Houston in 2011 or 2012, in a Chuy’s parking lot. Despite leaving nothing but the add-on Delphi XM Radio receiver visible, someone smashed the driver’s window and rifled the console and glovebox. They left the XM receiver (just as well - a phone…

From 1999-2002, I worked at then-DCX’s Plymouth Road Office Complex in Detroit, in a neighborhood that produced 3 daytime murders that I’m aware of during that time. Parking outside of the fenced-and-gated-and-guarded lots was ill-advised if you wanted to keep your car, as numerous supplier reps discovered to their…

Months-later reply as this showed up in the “Throwback” section today. My story isn’t anywhere near as salacious, but demonstrated a similar inability to reconcile reality with what they wanted to see.

In 1985, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of high school working at the…

#1. Christmas Eve, 2009. Driving from Houston to Tulsa, in my ‘99 Mustang Cobra with a autocross suspension setup and fresh Kumho Ecsta SPT summer tires (not the best choice, but the truck was needing new rubber and I figured full tread was better than no tread).

#2: Driving home from Miami, Florida, to Waterford, MI, in a ‘95 E350 Club Wagon at the end of January, 2000. We got off the cruise ship and, in this pre-smartphone era, found someplace with The Weather Channel, where the forecast was dire: we’d hit the Georgia state line about the same time as the ice storm. Whee.

#3 A couple years before #4, driving home from Tulsa after Thanksgiving and just after getting past my finish/stop decision point of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in good shape and feeling able to make the last 130ish miles home, hit a blinding snowstorm just past Auburn.

I’ll give my top 4.

#4: Driving Waterford, MI to Tulsa, for Christmas. Stop in Rolla, Missouri, overnight, about 10-12" of snow falls while we sleep. Call to folks in Tulsa and it’s apparently the same all the way there. It’s only about 180 miles. We wait a bit for the Missouri DOT to get at I-44, then head out in the…

Russets. Boiled until soft. Drained well. Hand masher (I use a bent-wire model instead of a stamped grid). LOTS of butter - the batch I made for Thanksgiving, about 5 lbs of potatoes, got 2 full sticks of butter, kosher salt, fresh-ground black pepper, and Just Enough Heavy Cream to get the consistency to that perfect…

That generation of Mondeo was sold as the Contour/Mystique. The SVT Contour was on that version. The Cougar on that platform showed up for the ‘98 model year.

We’ve chatted via email before, a couple years ago. Used to do cooling system stuff for (at various times) Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Metaldyne, and GM from 1990-2008. Moved south and changed industries at the end of ‘08 as I was out of a job, out of a marriage, and the economy in SE Michigan was sliding right past…

One can hope, yes.

Sure. C-sub-p is a constant. It will always be there for us.

There’s a reason the H.E. Butts Grocery Company of San Antonio, Texas, is branded as HEB these days.

As you know(, Bob, er, David), I am 100% down for Tales of Climatic Wind Tunnels And Cooling/HVAC Testing.

I’m kinda sorry I wasn’t able to conference in on that call you had with Mr. Ennis.

It’s all about the Q-dot, baby. All about the Q-dot. M-dot is great, so is Delta-T, but they’re only in service of the Q-dot.

My glovebox door is lined up fine, but yeah, production variations and all mean you got one that’s a bit off. Unfortunate and frankly inexcusable these days. As for the upper roll on the door panels, I had to stop and think about the last time I consciously touched those other than with the underside of my upper…

Ah. Thanks! I didn’t spent a lot of time looking at the XLTs as I couldn’t get several of the things I wanted on the XLT.

I spent a lot of time playing around with the configurator before I landed on my oddly-optioned Platinum. Boiled down to my back’s weird geometry needing the Multi-Contour Seats that are only…

Yeah. It’s a smaller incremental gain that you or I (or, probably, Ford) would want, but physics says that pushing a 5000-lb brick around through the air is going to require a certain amount of energy, regardless of the source of that energy.

“Classic” — and I see in the comment stream that the store was previously Bill Heard Chevrolet.

Yep. “Classic” - on a Chevy store, an indicator that GM took the franchise back for some reason. It’s similar to finding a “Friendly” Ford store: at some point, the ownership of that franchise screwed up *so bad* that not…

Ah! Hence the “Classic” name. I moved to Houston after Bill Heard imploded, so did not know the backstory. Now I do.